In many modern high rise office buildings, large panels of glass have been used to form the entire exterior walls of the buildings, thus reducing the construction time of building the exterior walls and windows. The glass panels can be fastened together by the exterior frame of the building, thus forming glass grid walls surrounding the entire building. Another way of forming the glass grid wall is to “hang” each glass panel to the exterior frame (or wall) of a building behind the glass panel without physically attaching the glass panels to each other. This results in small gaps between the adjacent edges of any two glass panels.
One of the disadvantages of such glass walls is that they may cause discomfort to pedestrians on the streets or drivers driving their cars on the streets as they sometimes reflect light (e.g. sun light). Another disadvantage is that the transparent nature of the glass may not provide sufficient privacy to the occupants within such buildings. If the occupants use their own shades, blinds, screens, or curtains, then the building may present an unpleasant and untidy image to the pedestrians and on-lookers.
One prior solution to solve this problem is to apply a layer of coating to the glass such that the transparency of the glass is altered (e.g. one way transparent or opaque or semi opaque both ways). However, this prior solution results in the transparency of the glass being permanently altered. When, for example, it is desired to have the original transparency of the glass during a particular time of a day, such thing is not possible unless the layer of coating is removed.
Thus, it would be desirable if such glass walls can be utilized to provide benefit to people walking on the streets while still being able to offer privacy and energy savings to the occupants in the buildings behind the glass walls.